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Last days in “paradise” - drove to the Western Shore and the Southern Shores of the island. Also went windsurfing on the last day resulting in a hand full of blisters… totally “out of shape” for it… Realized how lucky I am to be able to travel and …

All packed up

jan von holleben - dreams of flying :: i especially like this one and this one.

We got a minivan

Pravin (with collaborator Andrew Doro) are featured in We Make Money Not Art for their project Detritus.

DATELINE: JFK                                       &nbsp…

all the problems of the online world accidentaly summed up on a single page: right here :: found it while searching for the correct spelling of “malamute”

In the last two days of prepping for the Cincinnati Fringe Festival it’s been a lot of set up. The video rig (see video below) contains just under 20 televisions all which company members had to cart down here from Chicago over the past few days.

Posting when I get the time…more to come

I’ve never got into Facebook, until Lisa Cho just introduced these new apps. Here’s an article about them…

http://robcurley.com/2007/05/24/washingtonpostcoms-new-facebook-app/

Has the intent of Alex Bisceglie’s thesis project, but difficult to produce when you are the only one who’s working on it.

There’s a wierd one that allows you to borrow money from your Facebook friends instead of a bank. I don’t know how that one is going to work.

Lending Club
By Lending Club
Thinking of charging $1,000 to your credit card? Think again: the
Facebook Lending Club is a smart, fun and responsible way to get a
$1,000 loan directly from a group of other Facebook users, fully
online, at the lowest possible rate.
2,284 users - 39 reviews

Was surprised to see that iLike has “899,303 users” since yesterday, it seems kind of sophomoric, or maybe I’m just way too old.

Many of you asked for my research in wearables and soft materials…

Some Links:

Material Connexion, www.materialconnexion.com
Material Research Society, www.mrs.org
NY Times on Chalayan, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/style/tmagazine/04talk.waldemeyer.t.html?ex=1176523200&en=b47c75afe9152ac2&ei=5070
Swift Textile Metalizing LLC, tel. 860 243 1122
Sauquoit Industries, tel. 800 858 5552, http://www.sauquoit.com/
Shieldex, tel. 315 597 6687, http://www.shieldextrading.com/
Lumitex, fiber optic textiles that are woven, www.lumitex.com
Electric Plaid, ifmachines.com)
Emfit, Plastic film that converts motion into electricity, www.emfit.com
Flexinol, with shape memory material, www.dynaalloy.com
Integrated Circuit, metal yarns and woven circuits, www.ris.averydennison.com Sensitive Carpet, multilayer conductive fabric, www.lab-leas.fr
Softswitch, flexible fabrics, www.softswitck.co.uk
Blowprint, relief printing, www.imprimerie-laville.com

Other materials to explore: Tyvek (the stuff the FEDEX envelopes are made of), conductive velcro, metal snaps, magnets, reed switches, conductive fabric, conductive ink (looks like nail polish), different folds, conductive film

§

PROJECTS

Blushing Dress – Phillips
http://www.design.philips.com/about/design/section-13599/article-14931.html
http://www.design.philips.com/about/design/section-13983/index.html

Ames laboratory research on metamaterial and magnesium-diboride wire segments

Electronic paper or E-paper, I saw this at Wired Nextfest. On the sleeve of a military uniform is a screen made out of this paper. To navigate between interfaces, you press soft switches, which are located in the sleeve of the uniform. Conductive ink is printed on paper.

Conductive Film, produced by General Electric

Suzanne Tick, Inc.

Kennedy & Violich Architecture
Sheila Kennedy and Frano Violich

DDCLAB (acronym for design, development and concepts)
Robert Crivello and Savania Davies-Keiller

http://www.stylefuture.com/index.php

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NYU PROJECTS on Wearables [All of these prototypes work]:

1) Andrew Schneider – Solar Cell Bikini

2) Terence Arjo -
YoTaxi! Video - http://itp.nyu.edu/~tra225/wearables/yoVideo_1.5.mov
[By waving your arm vigorously via persistence of vision, you can hail a taxi visually]

Personal Space Suit - http://taswearables.blogspot.com/ [coat that has porcupine-like quills embedded]

3) Carolina Pino – http://www.carolinapino.net/jacketjacketson.htm This is a wearable for kids, a kind of musical instrument jacket. When a child presses buttons on the jacket, it plays the sound of an animal or music]

4) Doria Fan - http://itp.nyu.edu/~df785/wearables/bracelet3.html
http://itp.nyu.edu/~df785/wearables/ [I really liked the RFID medical alert bracelets and the inflatables breasts dress [low-tech]

5) Jenny Chowdhury – intimate controllers
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennylc/sets/72157594549073284
[http://www.jennylc.com/intimate_controllers/blog/] –The user plays pong with intimate wearables.

6) Grace Kim’s The Soft Electric –http://www.iamgracie.com/thesis/

7) Joshua Dickens – http://flickr.com/photos/schwa23/sets/72057594108725619/ - Glowscarf – a scarf that lets you know when your cellphone rings
Britta Riley - Rapid prototyping fabric sculpture usin MAYA

9) Fiona Carswell, Nanna Halinen, Kate Hartman, Kati London, Megan MacMurray, and Alice Tseng-Planas
http://www.fionacarswell.com/QQuilt.html

10) Joo Youn Paek, Zoonori, origami musical instruments using Tyvek

11) My own experimentations with soft circuits using conductive thread and conductive fabric (bluetooth bracelet with phototransmitter), [1], [2]

§

Other Links:

http://www.talk2myshirt.com/blog/archives/category/technologies/display/

Signal Propagation and Multiplexing Challenges in Electronic Textiles
http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/sec_subscribe.aspCID=2553&DID=117683&action=detail

http://www.thefeaturearchives.com/100939.html

http://www.xslabs.net/

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Books
Transmaterial
Material World 2
Folding Architecture: Spatial, Structural And Organization Diagrams
Supersurfaces
Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006 (catalog), Suzanne Tick
Spoon, Issey Miyake, A-POC, process of fabrication
Skin
Paper Fashions (from More Paperwork) – paper as textiles
Rei Kawakubo, Kyote Costume Institute (exhibition), Japanese stencil paper
Rachel Sleight, The Sun, News Group Newspapers, beautiful dress made out of recycled paper, and skirt for Fabriano Spa, Hussein Chalayan – dress made of Tyvek, look like air mail stationary, Kei Ito – vest made of handmade linen paper, and dress made of Tyvek, performance costume

Others:
Hella Jongerius
Droog

The Importance of Being Hated

The first day of Where 2.0 is over, with Google announcing their new streetview perspective and Garmin announcing that they are opening up their API to third parties allowing anyone to build upon their web services. This should be a big boon for people who find their GPS to be indispensable for athletic training. [...]

Wow, the hairy monkey was very scary.
It was standing on top of a roof waving a bat.

We were all afraid of getting caught by those hairy monsters.
Jumping up and down of New York City buildings was more fun than scary though.
After running around for a while, I heard the bell ringing at the door.
Someone called “shinyoung!”
I don’t have a bell at my door.
Alone in my bed, I thought, ‘hum, it must be “Alice in wonderland” in my room. Someone must have rung the bell.’
It was scary but well, what the hell.

Just like that, after 12 hours of sleep from last evening at 6pm,
I woke up in my room in New York.

What happens when technology merges with religion and culture? A whole new brand of opportunities which enable us to extend beliefs and stay connected even from a distance. This new service I read about allows believers to send wishes using an SMS messages to be posted at the Kotel (the Western Wall) in Jerusalem.

For those [...]

I’ve been reading and writing about this insane law proposal for internet censorship by the ultra-orthodox Israeli party shas which passed the initial voting stages in the Israeli knesset. The proposed law requires from the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block adult content-based sites (sexual, gambling and violence) from children. The ISPs will require some [...]

My stereo and computer. Has nothing to do with anything, really.

DATELINE: New York, NY                                      &n…

Finally the weather stabilized a little and we had a full day of sun and wind - to match that we went out for a sail with all those who were still here in the island… Mark, Elena, Ricky, and Gavin (Rory’s brother) had left already so it was a “reduce…

I arrived early yesterday morning in the beautiful city of Cincinnati, Ohio, my college nickname’s namesake (Joey Cincinnati). From Wikipedia I have gained the knowledge that Cincinnati was orininally called Losantiville:

“Losantiville” from four terms, each of different language, meaning “The city opposite the mouth of the Licking River.” “Ville” is French for “city,” “anti” is Greek for “opposite,” “os” is Latin for “mouth,” and “L” was all that was included of “Licking River.”

Indeed. I am here with my theatre company Big Picture Group to participate in the Cincinnati Fringe Festival opposite the mouth of the licking river. We are furthering our production of TRUE+FALSE.

With no one else around today I was able to take in the city. The best way to get to know a city is by walking it. Although I didn’t charge myself with the task of walking the entire city, I did set out to get to know my immediate area. Our company is being housed in an arts complex on the southern border of Over the Rhine and Downtown. I started out on a giant loop around the area. First north on Vine up to 13th. Right to Main. Main all the way down to 3rd Street which is where The Taste of Cincinnati was happening this memorial day weekend. Then it was over to Elm and all the way back up to 14th Street. I was getting some looks mostly on the North side of Central Parkway, which is apparently the dividing line between Over the Rhine and Downtown. I got a “what’s up big man?” from a kid hanging out with his girlfriend. And as I walked between Race Street and Republic on 14th I heard some shouting from down the block near Washington park. “White boy!” It could’ve been anyone really, if there had been any other white boys in the vicinity. “White boy!” I don’t think the Mohawk is helping here. “Go the fuck home white boy!”

huh.

I can’t say that it didn’t affect me. I’m still not sure what I think about it. Am I a white punk gentrifying this man’s neighborhood for the week? Why am I getting yelled at here, but not a couple blocks south?

When I got back to the arts complex I’m staying in, I started doing some research on the history of the area. Most notable are the 2001 riots sparked from the death of Timothy Thomas. Thomas, 19, was shot in a dark alley by officer Stephen Roach who was later cleared of criminal charges. Thomas was unarmed. Thomas was wanted and had a number of warrants out for his arrest. Among them, he was wanted for driving without a seatbelt.

There are a plethora of articles on this subject that I’ve found through a simple google search or two, and none of them stand out as anything authoritative, in fact, they seem to contradict one another in a number of small ways.

One video produced by the extremely and frighteningly racistCouncil of Concervative Citizens (cofcc.org) is a scary really fucking scary example of a big part of the problem in racial tensions in cities like Cincinnati. Sad.

Midway through my research, I decided to head down to The Taste of Cincinnati downtown. There I ran into several beached-whales of red-skinned boozy business men and their families, I met a kid working for a company that is giving away a free luxury car, I met a police woman named Stella who didn’t want to talk about the local shelters Cincinnati has to offer, and I talked at length with Anthony Merit, a homeless man living in Cincinnati his entire life.

I’ve started writing about the experience, his story, and am trying to actively weave something together for T+F. Anthony’s story is very much true, he just doesn’t have a venue withing which to tell it. Much more on this later. For now I am excited to continue to explore this area in the minimal amounts of free time we’ll have here.

I will continue to post about BPG’s time at the Cincy Fringe here. Everyone arrives today. Here we go.

I’ll be going scuba diving in Sipadan (Malaysia) later this summer, so I figured it might be a good idea to polish up my (extremely rusty, +20 year old) diving skills.

The picture shows me in the pool at the 14th St. YMCA, doing my confined water dives for PADI certification. A lot has changed since [...]

I just arrived in sunny San Jose to present WayMarkr at the O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference. Very cool. I’m still on east coast time and it’s pretty late where I came from so I need to get some sleep. I don’t want to miss all the great talks tomorrow. I’ll keep [...]

7th Avenue & 55th Street

A must-go when you’re in New York. It gives Katz’s Deli a run for it’s money. Cole slaw and pickles are pretty awesome here, and the sandwiches are HUGE! Each meal can feed about 2-3 people.

Lots of celebrities eat here. We sat next to a lot of autographed photos from cast members of the The Sopranos tv show.

This sandwich is pretty huge (Woody Allen Special (?)). I only ate a quarter of it. Half pastrami and half corned beef.

This dish is called “Jeff’s special.” A mound of pastrami piled on knish, topped with melted swiss cheese. A similar dish is the Reuben except it’s on rye with sauerkraut.

Yummy strawberry cheesecake (the waiter told us it was their specialty).

More celebrities on the walls.

I would suggest walking down to 42nd street after this meal. Here’s the Chrysler building on the way to the 4.

been browsing through the genius of Bobby McFerrin that is available on YouTube :: ave maria :: driving and throat singing

twisted through time :: The Zimmers :: My Generation

if you are in NY tomorrow, i will be moderating what i hope will be an interesting conversation over at FIT :: for more info ::